Roadmap · v1 · 2026

The QA Engineer Roadmap for the AI age

A career path, not a catalogue. Start with a 22-topic starter path you can finish, then branch into automation, delivery, a specialism, or testing AI systems. You do not need all 123 topics to get a job.

123 topics in the full library9 stages123 guides written

Core: Required for this stage.
Go deeper: Choose this when it supports your role or specialisation.
Reference: Know what it is; return when you need it.

Choose your starting point

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Filter topicsGuide availableCompletedShow why it matters

Start Starter path

Stage 1

QA foundations

The thinking that survives every tooling shift: risk, oracles, and how to tell whether something is actually right.

After this stage, you can: Explain quality as risk, design a small set of cases, and run a structured exploratory session.
Build this: A one-page risk-based test approach for a feature you already know.
Typical roles: Junior QA, manual tester, anyone new to the craft.
About: 2–3 weeks at five hours a week

5 topics on this path

Milestone 1Write a risk-based test approach and a reproducible bug report.

Stage 2

Working on a product team

How testing actually happens on a team: the sprint, the regression cycle, and the documents everybody asks you to produce.

After this stage, you can: Sit in refinement, write cases someone else can run, file a bug that gets fixed, and sign off a release honestly.
Build this: A reproducible bug report plus a short test plan for one upcoming release.
Typical roles: QA engineer on a product squad.
About: 3–4 weeks at five hours a week

5 topics on this path

Testing inside a sprint, day by dayOpen guideCoreNew topic
Refinement, acceptance criteria and the three amigosOpen guideCoreNew topic
Writing test cases someone else can runOpen guideCoreNew topic
Writing a bug report that gets fixedOpen guideCoreNew topic
Running a regression cycleOpen guideCoreNew topic

Stage 3

Technical foundations

Technical skills that make modern QA work easier. A tester who can read a diff can review what an agent wrote.

After this stage, you can: Read a pull request, hit an API, check a database row, and diagnose a UI failure from DevTools.
Build this: A short write-up of a real bug you traced through HTTP, the DOM, or SQL.
Typical roles: QA engineer moving toward automation.
About: 4–6 weeks at five hours a week

5 topics on this path

Milestone 2Validate an API response and a database result yourself.

Stage 4

Test automation

Writing a test is the commodity half. Designing a suite that is still trusted in three years is not.

After this stage, you can: Build a small Playwright or API suite that other people can run, and explain why a flake happened.
Build this: A public or internal suite covering one user journey and one API contract.
Typical roles: Automation QA, SDET in training.
About: 4–6 weeks at five hours a week

3 topics on this path

Milestone 3Build a small Playwright or API suite in Git.

Stage 5

CI, delivery, and reliability

Skills that help QA work scale beyond a local test suite. Everything here is about a suite surviving contact with CI.

After this stage, you can: Put the suite in the pipeline, keep it under a runtime budget, and be useful when production breaks.
Build this: The same suite running in CI, with a note on what a red build should block.
Typical roles: SDET, quality engineer.
About: 3–5 weeks at five hours a week

1 topic on this path

Continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) for test suitesOpen guideCore

Milestone 4Run that suite in CI and diagnose a failed run.

Stage 6a

Specialise: performance, security, accessibility

Performance, security, accessibility and privacy: areas where failures can have the highest customer and business impact, and where unsupervised AI is weakest.

0 topics on this path

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Stage 6b

Specialise: AI as your instrument

Using AI to do the testing job better. This is the layer that makes an engineer who already has a job faster at it.

0 topics on this path

These topics are not on Starter path. Switch path, or open Full map.

Stage 6c

Specialise: testing AI systems

Many teams are beginning to ship large-language-model features, and almost nobody knows how to test one. The largest layer here, on purpose.

0 topics on this path

These topics are not on Starter path. Switch path, or open Full map.

Throughout

Communication, risk, and career growth

What stays scarce once writing tests gets cheap. Start these skills in Stage 1 and deepen them as you go; they are not a final exam.

After this stage, you can: Describe launch risk in language a product manager will act on, and show work a hiring manager can open.
Build this: A public write-up, a small suite, or a post-mortem that a stranger could follow.
Typical roles: Senior QA, QA lead, quality engineer, AI quality.
About: Ongoing, a little in every stage at five hours a week

3 topics on this path

How this stays current

The roadmap is a living document, not a snapshot. New topics are added as the field moves, and guides are revised when the thing they describe changes. A topic added after launch is flagged New topic on the map. Revisions to existing guides are not badged on every card; they show up here and on the guide itself. The version stamp moves once a year.